Overview

Violence against women and girls is a pervasive global problem, often deeply rooted in cultural stereotypes. In August 2008, with support of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and initial technical advice from UNIFEM, students and faculty at the Emergent Media Center at Champlain College (EMC) in Burlington, Vermont, and experts from the non-profit Population Media Center (PMC), began an innovative project aimed at preventing violence against women and girls.

Project Goal

Empowering Play’s goal is to engage and educate pre-teen boys ages 10-13 about violence against women through an episodic, interactive game and social networking application delivered globally via web and mobile technology.

Why games

By profoundly shifting beliefs, stereotypes, and attitudes on gender issues, games can contribute to prevention of violence against women. Delivering a message of respect and cooperation to boys at a critical life-stage using their media can effectively change their attitudes and behaviors towards girls and women.

Electronic games are a unique vehicle for reaching boys and young men. In a 2003 report, the Kaiser Family Foundation published the following findings. In the United States:

• 92% of children and adolescents ages 2-17 play video games.
• Boys spend more time playing video games than do girls, with 44% of boys playing daily compared to 17% of girls.
• Boys between the ages of 8-13 spend the most time playing video games.
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation

Increasingly, young men in developing countries are joining their peers in developed countries in playing
electronic games.

Employing the global popularity of football, the game design links the winning benefits of respect on the playing field to respectful behavior towards girls and women in the player’s social sphere. The player becomes a teen intent becoming a winning football player. Game play is based on football performance and on navigating community-based relationships. The player experiences diverse viewpoints and perspectives. To be replayed multiple times with different endings, the player is challenged to make complex decisions that influence the future of the team and the women in his family and larger community. Within these contexts the player comes into situations whereby decisions must be made about gender-based behaviors and violence. Choices made determine player success at winning the game. The player discovers the causative effect of personal choice—creating an arena where individual change from within can happen. Reliant on game principles and demographic research, conflict, competition, reward systems, action and exploration are key factors of the design. Adapting the Sabido methodology, they employ positive, negative, and transitional role modeling, cliff-hangers, and time for reflection on important issues.

Game Concept & Methodology

Employing the global popularity of soccer, the game design links the winning benefits of respect on the playing field to respectful behavior towards girls and women in the player's social sphere. The game, designed by students at the Emergent Media Center, utilizes three successful components:

• UNFPA toolkit of culturally-sensitive approaches to create change.
• Sabido methodology of entertainment-education.
• FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football) "Fair Play" rules.